Lies (and the Lying VP Candidate Who Tells Them)

By now, it’s been well established around the echo chamber of the political media that Paul Ryan didn’tentirelytellthewholetruth last night during his convention speech. Hot button campaign issues like the national debt, Medicare cuts, and Obama’s stimulus packages were… well… lied about.

“It just boggles the mind to imagine how Paul Ryan can stand up there and lash Barack Obama for abandoning Bowles-Simpson when he did exactly that himself. Or for taking $716 billion out of Medicare that Ryan’s own budget also removes from Medicare. Or try to blame him for the closing of a GM plant that actually closed while George W. Bush was president. Those three lies are just the beginning of a cavalcade that followed. I can’t in clear conscience call such a speech “good” or “effective.” -Michael Tomansky

Well, it couldn’t have been THAT BAD, right? Must be more bloviating from the liberal, mainstream media, right?

Wrong. These two quotes came from the conservative political media – FOX News and The Daily Beast. Sure, they’re in the “opinion” section, and written by columnists who have been known to have a liberal bias, but the fact that the editorial staff at FOX and The Daily Beast even decided to publish the pieces in the first place should tell you as an independent voter what you need to know. You were lied to last night. Of course, you’ll probably be lied to next week at the Democratic National Convention, so does this all really matter if you’re independent, undecided, or considering voting for a third party candidate this November, or is lying simply politics as usual in 2012?

Michael Tomansky’s The Daily Beast column mentioned above had some great additional insights on why Ryan chose to bend the truth, and what his resulting speech may have meant for persuading independents:

“I don’t know how well Ryan came across in this speech with undecided voters, if they watched. My guess would be very well indeed with men, rather less well but still respectably with women. It was mostly a speech for the hall, the red-meaters, but that bit toward the end, about the faded Obama posters in the kids’ bedrooms, and where he looked right into the camera and said, “If you’re feeling left out or passed by, you have not failed, your leaders have failed you,” was aimed at swing voters and probably reached them. And I’m sure that to old people who don’t know any better, he looks like a nice young man.”

Here’s our Independent Voters of America take — If you’re watching Mitt Romney’s speech tonight, remember to remain cynical, watch for tomorrow’s fact checks, read between the lies lines, and then, get ready to rinse and repeat for next week’s Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. However, maybe we shouldn’t be so cynical about the Democrats without seeing them in action first. At least Obama’s campaign hasn’t told the media “We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers…”

At this point, it’s hard to figure out if Republicans or Democrats will win the Campaign 2012 [lying] race to the bottom, but right now, Paul Ryan’s definitely taking it by a [pinnochio] nose.